Welcome to Wonderful Wotifia, Case Study Example

Executive Summary

Wotif.com has been an Australian leader in the online accommodation industry, where it offers different accommodation services and also specializes on providing flights and holiday rentals to its customers. The company was founded in 2000 in Brisbane, Australia and since then, the company has seen massive growth.  Wotif.com attracts more than 5.3 million persons on their website and make 252,000 bookings on a monthly basis. The company’s customer database reach over 1.7 million persons in New Zealand and Australia. The company’s success has been attributed to online presence, and good relationships with customers, and suppliers, as well as effective corporate responsibility (Briley, 2003). The company’s goal in its marketing campaign is to increase awareness among its target customers within 18-30 years by approximately 15%, where it aims to increase bookings by 5%. The budget for the campaign was estimated at $200,000.

Background

Wotif.com is an online accommodation company that was founded in 2000 in Brisbane Australia. It offers the biggest range of accommodation from backpackers to luxury 5-star properties with the best price. The marketing campaign that the company undertakes is designed to increase brand awareness among its consumers through its online platform. The company has registered impressive results since it was launched in 2000 and it attracts more than 5.3 million people to their website on a monthly basis and has a customer base of over 1.7 million in New Zealand and Australia. The company has historically served young market between the ages of 18 and 30 years that loves to travel around and mainly use smartphones. The company has been in the forefront in designing new products and services that target the young market. The company believes that they need to develop awareness campaigns among the young people since they have the least knowledge of Wotif.com. It has designed smartphone app, which will allow the target customers to more easily choose their hotel or flight on their mobile phone. This has been enhanced by the fact that Australia is the leading smartphone marketplace around the world. The goal of the marketing strategy is to create awareness among the young people (Briley, 2003).

Goals

Wotif.com has developed a marketing strategy that is geared towards creating awareness among young customers aged between 18 and 30 years.  The objectives include:

• Increase awareness of Wotif.com amongst 18-30 year old Australians
• Increase bookings made by 18-30 year old Australians by 5 % between January and March 2012
• Generate unique 10,000 new subscribers for Wotif.com e-news database

Target Market

The target market for the campaign will be customers between 18 and 30 years, which is a group that has the least knowledge in Wotif.com and they do not have any information regarding the product. This target market enjoys the use of smarthphones on their daily activities, which makes them an ideal market for the product. The target market uses apps on their mobile phones. The groups travel overseas most of the time, which means that they will have to book a hotel or flight.

Consumer Insight and Strategy

Consumer Interest

The target market being 18-30 years old Australian males and females are consumer that have least knowledge regarding the product offering by the company. The group does not have any hint on the brand. This implies that this will be an ideal target through an awareness campaign.  In addition, younger demographic enjoys freedom of smartphone applications, permitting them to travel paperless. This has boosted by the fact that Australia is the leading smarthphones dealer around the world and the company recently released a smartphone application. The younger demographic uses mobile phones in their everyday activities. Furthermore, for younger demographic, scoopons, cudo or living social are in direct competition with online booking services. It is evident that younger travelers will book overseas product online; nonetheless, older customers are not sure which sites offer averseas products and/or look for recommendations (Schwarz, 2009).

The Strategy

Wotif.com is highly cluttered online accommodation market, which offers the bran an opportunity to satisfy the needs of young customers. The marketing strategy aimed at making sure that the males and females become aware of the products offered by the company through rigorous online marketing. It uses internet marketing across the diverse markets, with restricted consideration of cultural nuances. Pricing will be another strategy that it will be used to attract customers, where the company will offer Wotif.com at a best price of value and it will have an audit team to undertake this task. The brand awareness campaign will have a broad range of accommodation that is displayed in a matrix, quick, ease-to-use website, and good customer service (Clow  & Baack, 2007).

The Campaign Idea

The campaign is designed to create awareness among young demographic between the ages of 18 and 30 years. The campaign will be used through online where the customers will access such information through their smartphones in which they will use apps that has been developed by the company. This campaign motivates those young people who already think they know the company to take another look at  its website, as they have evolved and now offer much more than domestic accommodation.Furthermore, a huge range of domestic and international accommodation and flight deals and packages for both domestic and short-haul international travel will be brought to the attention of the customers (Briley, 2003).The company has 62 percent brand awareness in Australia and 38.9 percent in New Zealand and are well established. And that 18-30 age market represents a huge percentage  of the online audience so they are enormously in the online space. The online campaign will feature across Wotif.com’s own channels and YouTube, Spotify along with Facebook. This will incredibly allow the product to reach the majority of the users that do not have information regarding the product. The campaign will present the product as exclusive and it unavailable elsewhere. Furthermore, the products will be presented on the website with different categories that the customer will choose from. The tag line for the campaign will be “Wotif. Everyone deserves a break”. This is a powerful tag line that will allow the company to strongly position itself in the market  and the competitors will find it hard to imitate, as well as being emotive to the target market (Clow  & Baack, 2007).

Campaign Evaluation

The campaign will deliver the goals because the strategy used, which is online marketing through the social media will be effective towards the target market. Males and females between the ages of 18 and 30 years have been cited as the primary users of smartphones through apps. The online strategy will ensure that information is distributed to the target market in the new world of digitally-based consumerism. The internet has put pressure on marketers to develop capabilities tailored to help the firm with current, as well as prospective clients in many ways. Focus groups think of Wotif as domestic accommodation providers, which shows low awareness of flights, as well as international accommodation and holiday houses. This was the challenge that the campaign was designed to address. Wotif.com, webjet, and lastminute are regarded as “big brands” in the market, which means that powerful top of mind awareness, trustworthy, and credible. This was important for 30-40+ marketplace, but for a younger demographic (Solomon et al, 2008).

Conclusion

The campaign strategy is the best because it seeks to create awareness among the younger demographic. There was low awareness regarding Wotif.com that was hampering the success of the product in the market. The campaign targeted market between 18 and 30 years being a powerful group that travels the most. The other factor of the target market was that the group used primarily smartphones in their daily activities, which made the company to launch an app that will be used to book for the product. Online marketing was used because the majority of the young demographic use internet. The campaign will become instrumental as the online strategy will attract large traffic to the website, which increase the customer base of the company. Furthermore, despite the campaign budget of $200,000, this budget will make the company attain its goals of creating awareness and increasing the number of new subscribers. The campaign was designed in a manner that it is reliable and easy to understand and the tag line fits a broader market. The tag line for the campaign will enhance the positioning strategy of the product in the market (Clow  & Baack, 2007).

References

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Briley, M. I. (2003). Reasons as Carriers of Culture. Journal of Consumer Research, 157-158.

Clow, K., & Baack, D. (2007). Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

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Rohr, R. (2009). The naked now: Learning to see as the mystics see. New York: Crossroad Pub. Co.

Schwarz, J. A. (2009). The vision board: The secret to an extraordinary life. New York: Collins Design.

Solomon, M. R., Marshall, G. W., & Stuart, E. W. (2008). Marketing: Real people, real choices (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

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World Trade Organization., & International Union of Official Travel Organisations. (2008). Handbook on e-marketing for tourism destinations. Madrid, Spain: World Tourism Organization.